Do Performance Air Filters Actually Work?

Hello everyone and welcome to this video sponsored by RetailMeNot. We are going to perform some very interesting tests. The question is whether high-

performance

air

filters

really

work

. I have four different air

filters

here in front of me and we're going to put them in. Each one of these on the car on the dyno looks at power and torque and then we will also do real world testing using this V box to see on the road if any of these air filters

actually

improve acceleration. so first let's get into the filters we're going to test, so the first one is the dirty air filter that was already in the core.

This is an OE filter, as you can see, it's full of bugs, grass dirt, that kind of stuff, so our baseline is going to be done with this dirty OE filter, wearing out the car for maybe three or six thousand miles and accumulating a good amount of errors there, the second filter we will test the same as the first, the only thing is its new, it is clean, there is nothing in it yet, so new OE filter that will then be tested after testing the dirty filter and then we will move on to our low cost option.

This is a CARQUEST filter that I found online for a lower price than the OE filter. We'll see if there's a difference between this lower cost aftermarket filter and the original equipment filter. It says premium on the box and we finally have our highest cost, high

performance

filter. This is a K&N filter that says right on the box that it's designed to increase power and acceleration, so we'll put those claims to the test. Does it increase the power? We'll test that on the dyno. Does acceleration increase? We'll test it in the real world using the V box, so before we jump in.

After testing I want to explain very quickly why a performance air filter could

actually

increase horsepower so there are really two things here and you don't actually need a tune to be able to see these differences so First, if the filter is truly less restrictive, that means the engine doesn't have to

work

as hard to suck in that air. If the engine doesn't have to work as hard, it will make more power because it is running more efficiently. The second is if you really can. Bring in more air by using a high-performance filter. If more air actually enters the engine, the engine sensors will see air coming in, as a result they will inject more fuel and as a result it will make more power, so that's the idea behind high performance air filters, so the We'll put it on the test bench and see if they really make a difference now if you're like me and buy auto parts all the time like we do or whatever else you're buying.

This RetailMeNot browser extension, which is free, is actually a really great way to save money and works on all types of websites, so for example, I went to Advance Auto Parts communication and entered the specs for my Crosstrek 2016 with the 2 liter engine. engine and then went to the air filters. I found a low-cost alternative to the OE filter, so here's a car search for 1699. I put it in my slice and as you can see, the RetailMeNot extension automatically applies any coupon codes that are available. and took four dollars and twenty-five cents off the order, which is amazing.

Every little bit helps, so you can find a link to download the tool in the video description if you're interested and it will work with all major browsers. Okay, let's do this trick with the dyno, so first up is our dirty air filter, so with each of these filters I'll do three pulls of the dyno and then we'll compare the best run of each air. filter what is your best possible power we will compare each of them individually so that our best run with the dirty air filter we are looking at one hundred fifty-eight point three horsepower and 130 7.3 pound-feet now the factory Subaru Crosstrek in The crank makes 148 horsepower and 145 pound-feet of torque, so what these numbers tell us is that this dyno is reading high now.

I'm not entirely concerned with what the numbers are individually more than what the comparison is between them, as I mentioned in previous videos using a dyno to tell how much horsepower your core has is not that useful using it as a before and after comparison. to make a change that's where the dinosaurs are actually very useful so that we can see the percentage differences and we don't. It matters a lot what the horsepower numbers are as long as the numbers are consistent and we only change one variable and then see what the differences are, as you can see the dyno has a slightly high reading at 158 ​​horsepower knowing that the Crosstrek only makes 148 horsepower, however each of these are on the same dyno configuration so the comparison will still be valid, so next is our clean OE filter, so Now we are answering the question: does a clean filter help improve horsepower?

Or does a dirty filter cause you to lose horsepower, so Pete estimates that we saw with the original clean filter one hundred sixty point one horsepower one thirty-seven point four pounds of torque, so an increase of about one point eight horsepower and point two? On average, they were almost identical, so while the peak at the top of the engine's torque curve and horsepower curves were slightly higher on average, they were actually almost the same, so There is not a big difference and the filter is not very dirty, but there it is. I know a decent amount of bugs and I know the dirt and stuff that's in there, so I was a little surprised that on average there isn't a huge difference between these two filters.

Well, next we get to our car and look for our low-cost premium alternative to aftermarket air filters. the original equipment filter and we actually have a significant increase in horsepower here, so sixty-three point three horsepower and forty-point eight pound-feet of torque, so we're looking at three point two horsepower versus the original clean filter and three point four. lb-ft versus the clean stock filter and in fact the entire curve was raised a bit so it appears this low cost alternative actually improves horsepower over the OE filter. Does it filter as well? You know, that's the type of filter.

The question here is that this thing just doesn't leak much and that's why it can have more horsepower. I don't know, that's not what we're testing in this video, we're just seeing if the performance changes and at this low cost. alternative so far using the dyno, it looks like this will actually make more horsepower than the stock filter, and finally we come to our high performance filter, the KNN and this is really cool, it did the best of the four filters, so 160 4.4 horsepower for its best performance 140 2.5 pound-feet of torque, so that's 4.3 horsepower more than the stock clean filter and 5.1 pound-feet of torque more than the stock clean filter and that's again practically in the entire curve that worked better. therefore, less resistance is less easy for the engine to draw in the incoming air, resulting in more power with the KN, so one sixty-four point four and one forty-two point five pound-feet of torque , so we will go into details below. real world tests and let's look at these horsepower numbers with these percentage differences that we're seeing actually match the real world numbers in acceleration.

Well, this is how real world testing will work. I'm going to use this. See the chart to measure the position and we will do drag races in second gear on the same strip of road. Each filter will receive three pulls and I will leave it on second speed. We will measure in five miles. hourly increments from twenty miles per hour up to 60 miles per hour those five mile per hour increments show us what RPM we're starting to see gains at because I can look at the individual increments and so we'll be doing that, if it's from about 2000 rpm to about 6500 rpm what we're going to measure, so the two numbers that I'm going to focus on for this video are what was the time from 20 miles per hour to 60 miles per hour, how long was that? that shot and then what was the time from 45 miles per hour to 60 miles per hour and the reason for that lower end and higher end there with the 45 to 60 is that it will show us if the higher end is actually seeing any improvement in the performance as we can I've seen it on the dyno and overall there's an improvement and then at the top end there's an improvement.

Well first there is the original filter which is dirty and I did these runs in a random order. The outside temperature remains the same. a lot all the time at 53 Fahrenheit, but I randomize the order of the tests that way, you know we could keep things consistent, we didn't have to worry about the fuel level dropping further and that affecting how things like that I tried anyway. to make this as fair as possible for all the individual filters and first we'll look at the numbers for the original dirty filter which had a 20 mile per hour - 60 mile per hour time of eight point nine six seconds if you thought you should buy a Crosstrek as a vehicle drag.

You might want to think again. These things are awfully slow, but from 20 miles per hour to 60 miles per hour with this dirty filter you did it in 8.9 6 seconds from 45 miles per hour to 60. miles per hour it did it in 3.5 9 seconds, so I took out the dirty filter stuck in the clean filter. Measured 2260 hours and from forty-five to sixty miles per hour and it was almost identical, so 9.01 seconds from twenty to sixty. and then three point six one second from forty-five to sixty, this is about half a percent difference and it lines up with what we were seeing on the dyno because on average the torque in the horsepower really weren't much different. between these two and then looking at real world testing we see that the original filter that is clean actually performs about half a percent worse than the dirty filter, but you know, within a very narrow range, they are basically identical , clean and dirty.

There is not much difference as far as the acceleration dyno results and the real world results show the same thing, so this is where things start to get interesting with the CARQUEST premium aftermarket filter, so the numbers we saw with this 20 to 60 miles per hour in 8.9 1 seconds about 1.2 faster than the original clean air filter and then from 45 miles per hour to 60 miles per hour it did it in 3.5 6 seconds , about 1.2 percent faster also now on the dyno for this car search versus the stock filter was about 2% better in the real world, we're seeing numbers about 1.2 percent better, so you know they correlate as far as it seems, in the testbed this worked better and then in the real world.

The world also did a little better now, these are simply changes to the air filter, so it's a minor thing and it will be a challenge to say if it really improves it by exactly one point two percent, but the data correlates and When doing this there are many differences. It is run using two different methods and having them line up leads me to believe that this actually provides a small increase in horsepower based on the numbers I am seeing and finally the moment of truth, does the high performance air filter does it really provide anything? benefit in the real world, so it says right on the box designed to increase acceleration and horsepower, and so on on the dyno we saw an increase in horsepower and torque of about 2.5 percent to about 3.5 percent and then in the real world from 28 to 60. miles per hour in 8.8 1 second, our fastest filter tested from 45 to 60 miles in three point four nine seconds, again, the faster, so real world testing is about two point two five to three point two five percent faster on the benchmark that we looked at. about 2.5 to 3.5 percent faster, so the numbers really correlate in the real world and on the dyno, which is cool to see, so overall it looks like yes, A high performance air filter can allow your engine to make a little more horsepower again, the numbers are pretty. small here, it's not like they're going to sit you back in your seat and get you excited about all the performance you get, but because of how easy it is to do and how little it costs, it actually makes a difference, which is great now that it exists.

One more point I would like to highlight because the Crosstrek has a built-in carbon filter inside the air box, so the air first passes through the air filter and then after passing through the air filter it has a restrictionadditional: this carbon air filter, so this is here so that when you turn off the car, the gases from the evaporative system do not come out through the inlet, gasoline does not come out through the inlet, but this is an additional restriction, but it is a permanent airbox part so there are actually plastic tabs, if you wanted to remove this you would have to cut them off, it is not a useful thing that you can change, although it is an additional restriction, so the reason why The one that I decided to leave for this video is because I think that most people, if they are simply going to install an air filter, are not going to think about this, they are going to install any air filter they choose, whether it is original equipment, whether aftermarket or high performance, and we still saw a difference with them, but for a future video I will of course test this to see if it really makes a difference if you put this carbon filter in and out and if it will make a difference with a filter original versus an aftermarket filter. so we'll test that in a future video, but I think it's worth pointing out something because some vehicles have these carbon filters that act as an additional restriction inside their intake, so in conclusion, high performance air filters They really make some difference.

Can they increase horsepower, can they increase acceleration well according to the data in this video? Yes, it's great to see and again, a big thank you to RetailMeNot for sponsoring this video. I have a link if you want to download that extension for your browser. It can help you save some money on auto parts which is always great or anything else you are buying. Thank you all very much for being attentive. If you have any questions or comments, of course, feel free to leave them below.